


Dirthara-Ma (May You Learn)

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: First and Commander: Namira Lavellan x Cullen Rutherford [8]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Clan Lavellan - Freeform, Dalish, Dalish Origin, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 18:43:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3457742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Namira Lavellan is devastated to learn what befalls her clan, and the loss calls into question everything about her new life as Inquisitor - including the man she loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirthara-Ma (May You Learn)

Cullen hears the news first.  

Josephine catches him in the hallway of the War Room, her face grim.  “Where is the Inquisitor?” she asks urgently.  “I have a letter…”

“She’s in the Dales,” he says, “off with Dorian, Sera, and Madame de Fer.”  He chuckles.  “I hope she knows what she’s getting herself in for.”  But the joke fades quickly when he sees the look on Josephine’s face.  “What is it?”

“It’s her clan,” Josephine says, and her voice is thick with sorrow.  “I sent messengers to the Duke -- and he sent his people -- but I am afraid they were too late.”

Cullen stares at her, reaches out for the letter.  It is as she says.  The clan is scattered, or killed.  Clan Lavellan, destroyed.  Her people.

The thin sheet of parchment is heavy in his hands.  “Perhaps -- perhaps I should tell her,” he says, his mouth dry.

“I should have moved more quickly,” says Josephine, clenching her fists.  “Maybe I could have prevented it.  I should be the one to tell her.”  She looks up at him and crosses her arms, bowing her head.  “But you raise a good point, Cullen.  This news… it may be easier to bear, coming from you.”  She nods, a clipped, tight movement.  “Take it.  And let her know I bear full responsibility.”

 

* * *

 

The hours seem to stretch on longer than he could have believed possible.  He can’t focus.  Soldiers bring him news but he waves them along, pacing in his office.  He does not know how he will tell her.

He hopes that she will continue her new routine, coming to see him once she returns.  Normally it brings a smile to his face, the way she skips up the stairs to his study, usually still in her battle robes, bloodied and dirty.  But the smile she wears for him is always as clear and bright as ever.

It’s no different, today.  There’s that quick knock at the door -- a pattern she used to use back home when she was restless as a child, listening to her lessons from the Keeper, tapping out a quiet knock on the ground she sat on to try and stay awake.   She showed it to him once and told him it would be her signal, an idea he found hopelessly charming.

There's the knock and then she’s moving toward him, still light on her feet despite the fact he can see her exhaustion.  

“There you are,” he says gently.  

She grins, tossing her hair back.  It’s a tangled fright, all the more endearing for it.  “It’s good to see you,” she says, clasping his hands.  But after a moment her smile falters.  She can sense something is wrong.

“Cullen, what’s happened?” she asks quietly.

“Perhaps you would like to sit down,” he says, gruff and unsure.  He’s gone over it the entire day, but he still does not know how to say this.  He's delivered bad news before but not like this, not to someone who means this much to him.

“Is everything all right?” she asks as he leads her to his desk.  She bypasses the chair and perches on the edge of the desk instead.  Normally he loves to see the way she sits there, reading a book as he finishes writing his messages by candlelight.  He’s got a special part of the desk cleared aside for her.

“I’m not sure how to say this, Namira,” he says heavily.  “It’s about your clan.”

Her face goes patchy white beneath her vallaslin and freckles, and her legs, dangling over the side of his desk, stop idly swinging.  “You wouldn’t be talking like this if it was all right,” she whispers.  “Cullen, please…”

He hangs his head, hands her the letter.  “I’m so sorry.  We couldn’t help them.”

She takes the letter, pulls it open with shaking hands.  He rests his hand on her shoulder as she reads.

She folds the letter back up rigidly, precisely.  She hands it back to him.  She looks past him at something he cannot see.

"Thank you for... for telling me," she mumbles, sliding off the edge of the desk.  She's unsteady on her feet, her steps uncoordinated as she walks to the door. Instead of opening it, she leans against the wall, breathing hard, her arms crossed stiffly over her chest.

He takes her by the arms and gently turns her to him.  She is trying not to cry, and the look on her face -- lost, horrified, sick -- cuts him to the core.  He's never seen her this way before, and he feels helpless.

"Come here," he murmurs.  Her lip trembles, and she buries her face in his chest as he embraces her.  She clings to him and he presses a kiss to the top of her head, then just holds her, feels her sob against him, her ragged breathing, her arms tight around him.  He knows it's not enough -- how could anything be, with what's happened? -- but it's all he knows to do.

 

* * *

 

The days pass in a filmy haze.  The world around her feels false and hollow.  She knows she’s numb, knows she’s grieving, doesn’t know what to do about it.  

She tries to find things that break through the greyness.  She climbs up to the top of Skyhold and sits on the roof, letting the wind buffet her to the point that her eyes stream and her face is chapped.  She sits there for hours staring at the horizon, staring to the Free Marches.

She tries to pray.  But the one thing that she never told her Keeper, the one thing that she kept to herself, was that the Dalish Creators had never spoken to her.  She believed in them the way one believes they will continue to draw breath; automatically, without thought, taking it for granted as one takes old stories.  She did not believe that Mythal would really come forth and protect the clan, or that Elgar’nan would bring vengeance upon their foes; she had always been too pragmatic, too self-reliant for that.  She saw the allegory in the different gods, the way that narrative wove together to make something more powerful than the sum of their parts.  The Dalish gods were good to the clan, but to her it was only in the way their teachings provided purpose and guidance.  She did not believe they had ever truly touched the lives of the Dalish, if they had existed at all.

So when she crumbles herbs and casts veilfire and whispers the teachings of her Keeper she only feels more hollow than ever.  She tries not to think of the faces of those she knew, butchered, bloody, but the images flood her mind more the more she tries to avoid them.

Maybe they could have been saved, had she been there.  Maybe if she had never left for the Conclave and its shemlen.  Maybe if she had never become a Herald or an Inquisitor.  And there is Cullen…  

Her face burns to remember the way she compartmentalizes things with him.  There was her life as a Dalish, and her life as the Inquisitor.  With the Dalish she was First, studious, a bit of a loner, but respected among her clan.  Yet she always felt a little apart to not feel the songs of the gods in her blood.  With the Inquisition, she was leader, open to all people, brave and bold even when she did not know what she was doing.  And Cullen fell into that part of her, a tall human with broad shoulders and the touch of cold lyrium in his hands, who sang the Chant of Light.  He was anathema to all that she should be as a Dalish mage.  

She had ignored the duplicity before she knew there was any danger to her clan.  Her home with them had seemed so far away that it did not matter if she consorted with a human, if she counted Qunari and dwarves and shem among her new clan.  But with home and its people destroyed she does not know who she is.

She finds no comfort in the old ways, and for a while she attempts new ones.  She borrows a training sword from Cassandra - a light one, as she is unable to properly lift the greatsword Cassandra carries - and spends an afternoon with her, viciously attacking the training dummies until she’s panting and sweaty and her arms and shoulders throb.  She asks Varric to tell her stories to take her mind off things, sitting by the fireside with him, trying to lose herself in her tales.  Cole whispers the darkest part of her thoughts back to her and tells her it will be all right, but she does not believe him.  Dorian finds her a book from the library on elven magic and leaves it with her.  There’s a note scrawled in the margins that says he’s always around if she wants to talk.

The others try their best to help.  Vivienne, despite her frostiness, arranges for workers to fill Lavellan’s room with flowers from the Free Marches, scenting the room with familiar jade’s breath, spireleaf, jeweled lily.  Sera buys her a drink in the pub and claps her on the back, telling her sympathetically it’s all shite, isn’t it?  The Iron Bull offers to take her dragonslaying, and Blackwall leaves a whittled halla in her quarters.  They all do what they can.

Solas is perhaps both the most and least comforting.  She tells him that she used to agree with him that the Dalish looked too far to the past, but that even so it seems their past is doomed to repeat itself.  So many clans lost.  So much violence.  She wants to let her guard down with him, but she knows the way he holds the Dalish in abeyance, and she stays guarded, wary, despite the look of sympathy on his face.

It is a relief when he does not argue with her or tell her that her clan brought it on themselves.  He only says, with great sincerity, “Ir abelas.  Mala suledin nadas,” and bows his head.  _I am sorry.  Now, you must endure._   It means much to her that he speaks in Elvish, and yet, hearing the words in his mouth makes her remember just what has fallen.

 

* * *

 

It is a few weeks before she can bring herself to see Cullen again outside of the War Room.  She keeps busy, taking her companions with her to close rifts and kill Freemen in the Dales. She only sends Cullen little notes to let him know where she’ll be going.  They’re warm notes, sent with too much familiarity to suggest she has ended things -- none of this is his fault, and she does not intend to take it out on him -- but they are only notes.  She misses him terribly but cannot bear the idea of being close to him again, not yet.

He keeps the distance she sets up.  Often on days they are both in Skyhold he finds her in the tavern and meets her for lunch, but he has taken her silence seriously, as he does everything.   He writes little notes back to her, filled with his best wishes and comments on how he misses her -- but he does not push her to see him.  She has appreciated the space to think, as terrible as some of those thoughts are.

Finally, after too long left alone in her own head, she has a messenger take him a note briefly scribbled in the common language.  She could write in Elvish, too… but who would read it now?  The thought sickens her.

She paces on her balcony, bare feet growing cold on the chilly stonework.  So many sets of her armor have heavy shem boots.  It’s good to feel her toes curl and uncurl again, even if it’s cold out.

“Inquisitor?” comes Cullen’s voice from the stairwell.  Despite her mood she almost smiles to herself.  Imagine her inviting him to her quarters for business.  

“Come in,” she calls back.  He climbs up the stairs, his curly hair the first thing to appear.  It’s mussed today instead of smoothed back the way it usually is.  She wonders if he has been having trouble sleeping again.  It worries her so.

“I came as quickly as I could,” he says, and he’s slightly breathless, joining her on the balcony.

“At ease, Commander,” she tells him.  “I hope you realize this has nothing to do with the Inquisition.  You don’t call me Inquisitor, and I won’t call you Commander.”

“Very well,” he says, and leans down as if to kiss her, but hesitates.  She catches the pause in his movement, and turns her head away, suddenly remembering why she had called him here.

“How are you doing?” he asks, resting his hands on the railing and staring out at the mountains.  His mouth tightens.  “It’s been a long time.”

“I know,” she says gently.  “Thank you, for giving me the space I needed.  I care about you, and I’ve missed you -- but there were some things I needed to straighten out.”  

“And have you?” Cullen says.  She sees the way he angles toward her, the whole line of him oriented in her direction.  He’s missed her too much, and she feels a stab of guilt, reaching out to lay one hand on his arm.  He leans into the touch, his face softening.

She pulls back and grips the railing, leaving her hand a few inches from his.  “There are some things I need to tell you.  I don’t know if you realize this, Cullen, but I have not been a good Dalish.”

“What do you mean?” he asks, his hand inching towards hers until the edges touch.

“I mean a great many things,” she says, fighting to keep back the well of grief springing again within her chest.  She bites at the inside of her cheek, trying to distract from the the mental with the physical.  “I was training to be the next Keeper for my clan,” she starts.  “The Keeper is supposed to protect us.  To balance wisdom and strength, to keep the clan together.  A Keeper teaches us about our Creators, protects us from demons, guides us as we travel, provides judgment and knowledge.”

“You sound well-suited to it,” Cullen murmurs, “based on what you’ve done here.”

“But I would never have been a good Keeper,” she says sharply. “I knew the old stories, Cullen, and I -- I didn’t believe them.”  She hangs her head, ashamed.  “Not really.  Not in the way my people needed me to believe, not in the way you or Leliana or Cassandra believe in the Maker and Andraste.  So there’s a part of me that was almost… relieved… to be sent away.  This way no one would know.  That’s why I’ve done well as a leader  _here_  -- few expected me to adhere to faith in the Maker, given that I am a Dalish, and none needed me to have faith in the Creators.  I could not have been a Keeper, and I know this now.”  Her fingers tighten on the railing until they hurt. 

She says it aloud, the thing that has torn at her most.  “But had I been there, they would have had one more mage on their side.  Maybe it would have gone differently.”

“Then the Inquisition would have been lost,” says Cullen, slipping his hand over hers.  “And for all we know, you could have died with them.”  His hand is warm, strong, calloused.  She can’t help but be glad he’s left his gloves off.  It happens too rarely.  She had almost forgotten how his hand felt with hers.

“That may be true,” she concedes.  “But this -- my clan, slaughtered -- is this the price I pay to be here?”  Her voice breaks, and she turns away from him, not wanting him to see her cry once more.  Once was enough, despite how kind and caring he had been with her, the way he had taken her into her arms instead of flinching at her raw grief.  But his kindness reminds her of her other source of guilt.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice is rough, low, emotional.  He has no glib answers for her and she is grateful for that, but she knows what she needs to say next.

“And then there’s -- there’s this,” she says helplessly.  “There’s us.”  She forces herself to look up at him.  He looks stricken, suddenly.

“Is it a problem?  For me to be human?”  His hand on hers clenches reflexively, tightening around her fingers.  She can see in his eyes how much he wishes the answer to be  _No.  Of course not._  And yet there’s fear there, too, behind the hope.

“When I look at you --”  She swallows, not knowing how to say this.  “It’s like there are two parts of me.  The Inquisitor, and Namira of Clan Lavellan.  And the part of me that remembers sleeping in an aravel every night, tending halla and listening to stories of Mythal looks at you and sees a human.  A courageous human, a good-hearted human, but a human.  A shem.  Somebody different, who stands for everything we don’t.”

She’s hurting him, but he stands there, taking every word she gives him and weighing it carefully.  She continues in a rush.  “Whereas part of me whose life has been turned upside down looks at you and sees a friend, more than a friend.  Someone who looks after me.  Someone I care about, more than I’ve cared about anyone before.”  

She laces her fingers through his, unable to look him in the eye anymore.  “But if this goes to its logical conclusion… if we defeat Corypheus, save the world, somehow live happily ever after… then I’m still an elf, and you’re a human.”  She closes her eyes.  “I know this all seems so far away, but I have to consider it.”  She chooses her next words carefully.  “If ever we were to have children, they would be like you, Cullen.  Not me.  And there would be still fewer elves in Thedas.”

She pulls her hand out from under his, walks away and sits on the edge of her bed, burying her face in her hands.  She hears his footsteps, feels him sit down on the bed next to her, senses how still he is holding himself.

“I never realized you felt all of this --”  He sounds ashamed of himself.

“I didn’t expect you to,” she whispered.  “How could I, when I never told you?”

He is quiet for a moment.  When he speaks, he stumbles over his words as if they stick in his throat.  They come out faint and cracked.  “Whatever it is you wish to do -- if you would rather -- if you need to be with someone of your own people -- I will respect it.”

She lifts her head, looks at him out of the corner of her eye.  His shoulders are slumped, his hands folded limply in his lap, his head bowed.  

She considers him, fighting tears.  She thinks of babies with pointed ear tips, children laughing the first time they brush a halla, the ride of the clan across the plains, the weight of millennia of fighting and bitter loss and old tales.  Yet also in her thoughts is Cullen with his bravery, Cullen leading his people, Cullen fighting the man he used to be to try to become someone better.  There’s Cullen and the way he holds her, the way he smiles at her, the way he cherishes  _her_  and not her anchor and what it can do.

She lets out a long breath, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.  She reaches out and lays a hand against his cheek, gently turns his head to face her.  His eyes are shadowed, his mouth a grim line.  

“In another life, maybe I would have been content to stay within the clan,” she breathes.  “And no matter what else I am, I will always remain Dalish.”  She inches closer to him, gazing into his eyes.  Hope flickers in them.  

“But I am living _this_  life,” she says firmly.  “I am Dalish, but I am also Inquisitor, and that means being here with those who are  _also_  my people.”  She sighs, stroking the skin of his cheek, feeling the brush of his stubble against her fingertips.  “It means that despite everything, all the differences between us, mage and templar, elf and human… it means I love you, Cullen Rutherford.”

The words slip out of her as if they are familiar, but they aren’t -- it’s the first she’s said them.  She realizes suddenly the weight and truth of what she’s said, but before she can say anything else he’s closed the distance between them, his arms wrapping around her, mouth opening against hers.  The kiss is fierce, his mouth wet and warm and right, and the feel of his body pressed against hers is right, too.

He breaks the kiss first, panting.  “I love you, too,” he says, and leans his forehead against hers, his shoulders rising and falling.  “I’ve wanted to say that for, ah, a while now, but I did not wish to rush you.”  He laughs a little, as if chastising himself for being foolish.  “The idea of losing you… I would never force you to stay, never, but I could not bear it --”

She feels his breath on her cheeks, familiar and comforting.  “Neither could I,” she whispers.   She kisses him again, softer, slower, then smiles at him.  It’s the first real smile she’s worn in weeks.  It feels good.  For the first time since she heard the news, she remembers what it feels like to hope. 

**Author's Note:**

> My first time really musing on being Dalish. As much as I would like to do a more pious Dalish I don't think I have it in me to do a non-questioning religious character. Hope this read out okay for those who are more into the Dalish than I am, but this felt like a conversation they needed to have sooner or later.
> 
> ALSO WHY WAS IT SO EASY TO FAIL THAT DAMN WAR TABLE OPERATION ;_;


End file.
